Stark Words About the Navy From a Former Navy Secretary

This reports on some observations from the former Reagan era SECNAV, John Lehman, who also has had a deckplate view of naval affairs as a carrier pilot.

He knows whereof he speaks!

“We’re building only five ships a year; we’re on the way to a 150-ship Navy” he says. In his view, that is courting disaster. “That is not enough to cover our security requirements,” he says. “Seventy-percent of the world is covered by water. We no longer have basing rights around the world. If you have combat operations going on you need air cover and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that comes from the Navy. To fly one ton of cargo into Iraq takes 14 tons of fuel. That’s not cheap. It’s got to go by sea, so you have to protect it. The Iranians, for instance, have very good submarines.”

The ultimate threat, he says, is China, which “is now building their 600-ship Navy, to fill the vacuum, and they’re very good ships.”

We can ignore this problem only at our peril.

It is part and parcel of the attitude of much of official Washington to not want to REALLY commit all-out to the war on Islamofascism, and the necessary concommitant requirement to maintain a sufficient military force to do this, as well as maintain an adequate force to meet other possible threats like that of the ChiComs, or perhaps even a revived and adventurous Russia.